Linnean System of Plants, 155 



lity, if not to demonstrate its truth. Mr. Cranch tells us, that, 

 having placed two living specimens in a vessel of sea-water, 

 the animals very soon protruded their arms, and swam on and 

 below the surface, having all the actions of the common cuttle 

 of our seas. By means of their suckers they adhered firmly 

 to any substance with which they came in contact, and when 

 sticking to the sides of the basin the shell might easily be 

 withdrawn from the animals. They had the power of retiring 

 completely within the shell, and of leaving it entirely.* One 

 individual quitted its shell, and lived several hours, swimming 

 about, and showing no inclination to return into it; and others 

 left the shells as they were taken up in the net. The observa- 

 tions of Sir Everard Home are, perhaps, no less decisive, 

 confirmed, as they have been, by subsequent naturalists. He 

 found the ova of the animal caught in the Argonauta (so the 

 shell is known in science) to differ from those of every other 

 testaceous animal that lives in water, in having a very large 

 yolk to supply the young with nourishment after they are 

 hatched, and in not being enclosed in a camerated nidus, or 

 chambers of a peculiar kind, which are a necessary defence in 

 the period between the Q,gg being hatched and the young 

 acquiring its shell.f I shall leave you to your own reflections 

 upon this fact. It is not the least remarkable of the marvel- 

 lous works with which Infinite Wisdom has stored this world. 



" Wonderful, indeed, are all His works, 

 Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all 

 Had in remembrance always with delight." 



I am, &c. G. I. 



Art. VIII. An Introductory Vietv of the Linnean System of 

 Plants. By Miss Kent, Authoress of Flora Domestical Sylvan 

 Sketches^ &c. 



(Continued f?'om Vol. I. p, 436.) 



Leaves assume an endless variety of forms and combina- 

 tions ; some are shaped like an egg, some like a heart, some 

 like a fiddle, some like a hatchet, &c. Others are com- 

 pound ; composed of many small leaves called leaflets, which, 



* Aristotle knew that the animal of his iVautiluswas not naturally con- 

 nected with the shell. {Be Nat. Animal., lib. iv. cap. ii. sect. 54.) 



f Tuckey's Narrative of an Expedition to the Zaire, appendices ii, and 

 iii. Mr. Broderip, in an interesting essay on this subject in No. xiii. of 

 the Zoological Journal, considers the question still undecided; but his 

 observations upon the whole, in my opinion, support the view I have 

 taken. 



M 2 



